Tangerine by edward bloor sign12/4/2023 The best advice for kids who want to be authors is to write what you know. I realized one day that I could write them as well as read them.ĭo you have any advice for kids who want to become writers? Part of my job here is to read young adult novels. I still have a full-time job, as an editor of reading and language arts textbooks at Harcourt School Publishers. That story is about both the people who are moving out and the people who are moving in. The destruction of the citrus groves all around me was the inspiration for Tangerine, my first young adult novel. Why did you select Florida as the setting for your novel Tangerine?īloor: Our part of Florida is in a state of transition between the old citrus economy and the more diverse economy that has replaced it. As I recall, they were all basically the same: Chip and his friends would encounter some obstacle to winning the big game they would overcome the obstacle, and then they would win the big game. Who were your favorite authors growing up?īloor: My own reading as a child was consumed by the Chip Hilton sports stories by coach Clair Bee. I was suddenly popular, and I have pursued a career in writing ever since. I can vividly recall when my seventh-grade teacher challenged me to write and put on a series of silly commercials in front of the whole school. Even at a very young age, I wrote plays and stories to amuse my family and friends. Have you always wanted to be a writer? When did you start writing?īloor: Writing has always been a part of my life. We have two children _ Amanda, 15, and Spencer, 10. She still teaches middle school language arts here in Winter Garden, a small city northwest of Orlando. (Paul Fisher, the hero of Tangerine, and I both look at Florida as outsiders, although I have now been here for over half my life.) I taught middle school language arts in Fort Lauderdale. I graduated from Fordham University in New York and lived in New York, Boston and England before moving to Florida. I played soccer there from the time I was 8, up into college. I guess a good place to start would be for you to tell us a little bit about yourself.īloor: I was born in Trenton, N.J. GradeSaver, 10 January 2017 Web.So, join me as I chat with Ed Bloor about Florida, writing and one of my favorite topics _ books. Next Section Irony Previous Section Symbols, Allegory and Motifs Buy Study Guide How To Cite in MLA Format Lynch, Molly. Thus the various degrees of family bonds act as a metaphor for the various levels of superficiality and depth in human society at large. But this doesn’t go very deep-as Erik turns out to be not much of a star and his personality is sociopathic and cruel. The Fisher family is also united around Erik’s football stardom. It’s the appearance of wealth and sterile middle class perfection that hold the families together-though not very well. The poorer, working families of Tangerine are united by their poverty. They are not only devoted to the family business, but they also stand up for each other by physically taking revenge. The Cruz family, and the people of Tangerine town in general, show strong loyalty to their families. There are different things that hold families together in Tangerine, some more superficial that others. As we see the families of Tangerine mistrust the families of Lake Windsor and as we see the Lake Windsor families discriminate against the Tangerine families, we see the ways that class difference divides people generally. The tensions between the two communities in Tangerine are a metaphor broader tensions between communities of different classes. While football is the actual source of violence and lies in the novel, soccer is the sport that brings people together. While football is an aggressive sport, often described in the novel for its violence and ugliness, soccer is described by Paul for its beauty and cohesion. This difference acts as a critical metaphor for the difference between two different spirits of competition and sports culture. There’s a clear difference in Tangerine between football and soccer. it’s about seeing what lies beneath the surfaces. Vision, in Tangerine, is about more than just seeing surfaces. But while he is deemed legally blind, Paul can see better than anyone else what is happening around him. Paul’s near-blindness is a central part of the story. In this way, the story can be seen as a metaphor for Paul's coming-of-age and loss of innocence. He also goes from not knowing how to speak the truth, to being freed from the lies of his family by bravely calling out Erik’s violence of what it is. Tangerine is a story that reflects a young boy’s development as he goes from being afraid of his evil brother to having no fear at all in the face of Erik’s threats.
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